The report, from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, comes at a time when the protest movement known as Occupy Wall Street has gained nationwide visibility — and no small degree of public support — by criticizing what its members see as a close relationship between big banks and the federal government.

The falling number of fraud prosecutions is striking given what many claim is a strong pattern of financial-sector misconduct in recent years, culminating in a housing crisis characterized by alleged rampant mortgage fraud and improper foreclosure, as well as the weakening of the national and global economy.

And these crimes continue. Yet another register of deeds, this time in Winnebago County, Illinois, has uncovered evidence of ongoing robo-signing, which is fraud against state courts and local recording agencies. Nancy McPherson has collected the evidence from her own office, and found hundreds of instances of this fraud:

McPherson’s office sampled a small number of foreclosure documents in her office and found hundreds of apparent forgeries.

“‘Linda Green’ is on documents as vice president of Wells Fargo. She’s (on other documents as) vice president of (Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc.). She is vice president of Optical Mortgage Co. as well, and all of the signatures are completely different,” McPherson said. “Another name to take notice of is ‘Pat Kingston.’ She or he has several different titles. Lately, (the lenders or document providers) haven’t been using ‘Linda Green’ as much. There’s a new set of fake names. ‘Brian Blaine’ is the vice president of Chase Mortgage Bank. He is vice president of Washington Mutual Bank. He is vice president of Nations Credit Financial Services Corp. He’s vice president and attorney in fact for IndyMac Federal Bank.”

You can add to the ongoing fraud in the mortgage sector the situation at MF Global, which a Democratic commissioner of the CFTC acknowledges looks “nefarious.” Yes, that’s what I’d call a financial firm stealing money from depositors and using it on bets on their own account.

And you can just go down the line. Since the financial crisis, very little if anything has changed on Wall Street. And we know that accounting control fraud, fraud in representations and warranties and more conventional forms of origination and securitization fraud was a major feature of the crisis. Yet nobody went to jail. A new trend in federal oversight is deferred prosecution agreements, where firms self-report their crimes and win softer, if any, penalties. Agency budgets for the leading watchdogs of Wall Street have shrunk. The Justice Department is consumed with anti-terrorism business rather than the theft of public wealth.

Just this week, one of the first corporate CEOs has seen his bonus and stock profits clawed back, as per the Sarbanes-Oxley law. The company was accused of accounting fraud, but the CEO, Maynard L. Jenkins, was not personally charged for the misconduct. It’s part of another worrying trend, where nobody on Wall Street has to admit guilt for their crimes, even if they have to pay a penalty.

This is “regulatory capture” by the industry. By successfully defunding the entire government enforcement apparatus while using the legislature to improve its revenue and tax positions, Our Financial Overlords have insured that anyone who wants to work in finance works for Sauron, er, the investment banking industry, and only the ones that can’t get hired there, or who are in it as actual public service, go into enforcement.

Thank you for posting the info about Winnegago County! I saw the story months ago about those 12 Illinois Counties, but couldn’t find any information on which ones (other than Sangamon, which is where our state capital of Springfield is located). I spoke to the reporter for The Rockford Star and found out that the other counties involved should be in the more populous areas of the state.

Occupy Rockford, Northern Illinois Jobs With Justice and other housing advocy groups held a protest this morning outside of Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office.

This is one area where the 60 vote rule or partisan politics can’t excuse O from achieving nothing. He owns this dismal and telling failure of justice. Alberto was better than Eric (that was hard to write but I think it is true)!!

now i voted for Oblabla hoping he would be a breath of fresh air, new vision,intelligence,and honesty. instead of fresh air all i get are politically poisinous clintonian farts. he does not deserve a second term. the republicans are purposely running shitty candidates because he is their good little corporate tool. after lying to get elected, he has not done jack shit. if you re elect him he will fuck up the country,your family, and the reputation of the democratic party even more.

You’re all right. WRT MF Global, my only client had his account there. In cash, no open positions when they went down. People with open positions have had 60% of their funds returned, but people who were just trusting MF Global to HOLD their cash will have to wait until January to even file a claim to get their money back. Kind of implies that the bankruptcy trustee thinks there might be someone with a prior or higher claim to the money available than simple cash depositors. How bad does that stink? Not to mention that I am now prevented from playing something I have waited a very long time for, and so far, it is working out beautifully. Without me.

What’s worse is how the corporate world insulates otherwise culpable individuals from accountability so that, say, some exec does not get frog marched into prison. Rather, there is a big fine which is largely symbolic. The corp pays, maybe the exec pays some, and that’s it.

Skating is a cottage industry. The perpetrators are a step ahead of the prosecutors, who cannot afford to lose a case and so are reluctant to pursue such. Careers in the balance, no?

Fraud now defines the financial world. The markets are now broken and volume in all markets is plunging. Leaving market movements in the hands of the giant players gaming the system and or playing each other. With the invisible hand of government pushing things around as well.

It is inappropriate to call the financial markets, markets, now. The markets and the financial system, such as it is, is running on fumes and fraud. The emperor has no clothes.

A dislocation and collapse could happen at any time. The Euro bailouts are funding capital flight out of Europe and much of that money is flowing here which is propping things up. It is possible with so few hands now in the game, with enough close cooperation with the Fed and Treasury, ie. the government, a panic might be averted. In the meantime the system rots.

The age of ‘growth’ is over. Done, it is finished. Hope all you will, it’s over.

William Black, appointed by Reagan to head the Savings and Loan investigation of the early 80′s (and some would say caused by Reagan), when interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! a couple of weeks ago, had it right: In this financial crisis, 70 times greater than the S and L crisis, in which his investigation recommended 10,000 prosecutions, the Holder Justice Department has recommended 0 (yes, zero!) prosecutions. His recommendation today: Fire Holder, Fire Geithner. Fire Bernanke.

If you take 50% of the Justice department and its associated enforcement services, and convert it to counterterrorism, then take 60% of what’s left and assign it to internet child pornography and related trafficking, what do you suppose happens to the divisions that are tasked with white collar crime?

That switch was put in place during the G.W.Bush administration and was one of the things that he was “working to make permanent” his last year in office. What has become permanent about it since Obama took office has been the Fusion Centers.

If you look at when the crimes were committed, they were committed knowing there would be no enforcement at all. If you blame only Obama and Holder, you’re an idiot. Something like this took a bit more planning and execution than just not prosecuting anybody.